Recent Posts

Unconventional plays in the Permian Basin are nothing new to the shale scene, as the basin has been horizontally drilled and hydraulically fractured for years. Still, a new approach for evaluating sweet spots, particularly in the Avalon Shale of the play’s Delaware Basin, is slowly changing the way unconventional resources are explored – and perhaps one day, developed.

As part of Senator Lisa Murkowski’s (R-AK) efforts to craft comprehensive energy legislation, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee recently held a hearing to discuss 26 bills that would expand energy supplies.

There’s still time to save by registering in advance for this year’s AAPG Annual Convention and Exhibition, which will be held May 31-June 3 at Colorado Convention Center in Denver – and reduced registration fees are still available for those who act quickly.

When 3-D seismic technology became a must-have tool for the E&P crowd beginning in the mid-1990s, there was considerable scurrying to get up to speed on this then-daunting high-tech application. Even today, it’s not uncommon to see a non-geophysicist’s eyes glaze over when a discussion turns to even basic seismic terminology like P-waves, which move through both solid rock and fluids, and S-waves, which travel only through rock.

Access to modern 3-D seismic data is critical to educating the next generation of sedimentologists, stratigraphers, structural geologists and geophysicists who envision a career in the petroleum industry.

Equipping you to be a world-class geoscientist is our goal here at AAPG. It’s why we exist as a scientific and professional association: To assist you throughout your career to stay at the top of your game.

There’s a major scientific initiative evolving in Baton Rouge, La., that is expected to have a positive impact around the globe. It’s the relatively new Water Institute of the Gulf, appropriately located in this city bounded on its western edge by the majestic Mississippi River as it wends its way southward to meet the Gulf of Mexico.

Like numerous other geologic formations, the allure of the Wilcox has waxed and waned owing to fluctuating commodity prices, among other issues. As hydrocarbon prices recovered and technology applications like hydraulic fracturing became commonplace, the Wilcox beckoned anew, attracting principally the mom-and-pop shops and the small to mid-size independents.

This field seminar offers an excellent opportunity for the students to walk on a variety of modern terrigenous clastic depositional systems while observing sedimentary processes, modern sedimentary structures, and numerous trenches illuminating the three-dimensional architecture of each area.

Join leading scientists and industry practitioners at Extending Mature Fields’ Life Cycles: the Role of New Technologies & Integrated Strategies, a Geoscience Technology Workshop (GTW) organized by the AAPG Latin America Region and the Asociación Argentina de Geólogos y Geofísicos Petroleros (AAGGP).

The field trip will visit sites where evidence of this volcanic history can be examined as well as the petrified forest and new visitor center and paleontology lab at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.

This course is designed for geologists who wish to interpret and explore lacustrine microbialites and associated carbonate facies for hydrocarbons, or just want to familiarize themselves with microbialites and lacustrine systems.

This four-day field trip will begin with a drive from Denver to Glenwood Springs and a road log describing the general geology along Interstate 70 (I-70), as well as an overview stop in Rifle to introduce the Wasatch and Green River systems. It will focus on two themes: observing the characteristics of a wide variety of sedimentary environments and comparing these with subsurface data.

This course will focus on Cretaceous sandstones in the Powder River and D-J Basins, including the Turner, Codell, Shannon, Sussex, and Parkman Sandstones. Cores from both the USGS and company collections will be presented.

This six-day field seminar is designed to provide participants with an appreciation of the broad range of deep-water reservoir facies, the mechanisms by which they were deposited, their predictive attributes, their reservoir heterogeneity and their stratigraphic architecture.

Take advantage of this unique opportunity to learn all the aspects related to the understanding and modeling of fractured reservoirs. Attendees will take geologic concepts and use them in reservoir modeling through hands-on sessions devoted to the examination of outcrop, core and log data. They will use that information and a software to create 3D fractured reservoir models. Using actual Teapot Dome (Wyoming, USA) field data from the Tensleep and Niobrara Shale formations and a hands-on approach, the workshop allows the geoscientist to identify fractures and to construct predictive 3D fracture models that can be used to identify productive zones, plan wells and to create fracture porosity and permeability models for reservoir simulation.

Shark Bay was declared a World Heritage area in the 1980s because of its unique geo-biological attributes, particularly in hypersaline basins, in areas which remain pristine today. This field trip provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to observe stromatolites in their stunning present day environment at Hamelin Pool, Shark Bay. As part of this special trip, access will be provided to areas not normally open to the public. You will be able to access and inspect modern day intertidal to subtidal microbial systems.

This field seminar offers an excellent opportunity for the students to walk on a variety of modern terrigenous clastic depositional systems while observing sedimentary processes, modern sedimentary structures, and numerous trenches illuminating the three-dimensional architecture of each area.

This trip will visit the breathtaking coastal outcrops of turbidites, carbonate platforms, fluvial sediments and pillow lavas along the cliffs southeast of Melbourne. Come scramble down craggy slopes at Cape Liptrap to view superb outcrop-scale fold and thrust structures in Devonian turbidites, then take a 5 km hike along the adjacent coast where Cambrian ophiolites and exhumed amphibolites, faulted against trilobite-hosting Ordovician marls and Devonian reefal carbonates will be revealed. This will be followed by a trip to a site of Early Cretaceous fluvial rift sediments deposited during the initial separation of Antarctica from Australia to open the Gippsland Basin.

The Hawkesbury Sandstone is the foundation on which the city of Sydney was built. This trip will allow discussion of the sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy of the Hawkesbury Sandstone by examining outcrops around the scenic Sydney Harbour and in spectacular coastal cliffs in National Parks close to the city. The sandstone displays a wide variety of sedimentary structures combined with superb scenery offering many opportunities for photographers.

Experience the World Heritage Exhibition Centre in the Mt Tomah Botanic Gardens, the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre, and various geosites including the iconic Triassic sandstone landscapes at Govetts Leap and Echo Point.

Participants will learn a specific and comprehensive methodology for finding and developing conventional and unconventional oil and gas resources associated with lake deposits. The seminar will start with the Quaternary Bonneville basin in Utah, to build familiarity with lacustrine depositional processes. Participants then examine world-famous exposures of organic-rich mudstone, fluvial sandstone, and carbonate microbialite facies in Wyoming.

Participants will learn through the use of spectacular outcrops, subsurface datasets, and stratigraphic modeling how these systems tracts and key surfaces (flooding surfaces and sequence boundaries) may be recognized.

This three-day workshop has the primary goal to share knowledge, case studies, techniques and workflows pertaining to the understanding and prediction of hydrocarbon seals for exploration and production in the Middle East. These seals range in age from Pre-Cambrian to Tertiary.

This three-day workshop aims to provide a forum for professionals from industry, academia and government agencies, who are actively involved in the study of Middle Eastern Source Rocks, to share their advances in source rock related fields, present their experiences and challenges, and demonstrate relevant technologies and solutions.

There are more approximately 1,000 oil and gas fields in the world that have been classified as "giant," containing more than 500 million barrels of recoverable oil and /or 3 trillion cubic feet of gas.